that was an hour of my life I won't get back. The code: 
use strict;
 .
 .

next unless s->{ID} =~ /\d\d+/;
  .
  .

[download]

And like 20 lines later, the compiler tells me "Bareword found where operator expected", in the middle of an SQL statement... I'm scrutinizing THAT line, as instructed, and for the life of me, all the quotes and arrows and braces and parens look perfect- I MUST BE MISSING SOMETHING! So I look even harder. And look at nearby lines too. But NOT at 20 lines away!

Now honestly, WHO would think "gee, I better check TWENTY LINES ABOVE this, to find that BAREWORD which isn't allowed in strict..."?? Apparently Larry didn't have his coffee when he wrote THIS check. WTH?? Added the $, program was 100%

Love Perl, it made me 10X more productive than the old J2EE days. But sometimes something like this comes along, and I'm thinking "even after all these years since my first OSCON, Perl STILL ain't ready for primetime"

rant off, back to the code....

In reply to REALLY PERL ?? by misterperl

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